Public opinion had now taken a different turn; and, what is more important, the character of the difficulties and objections generally raised had become wholly different. People began to inquire about the Jews themselves: would they or would they not be inclined to form a new society for the colonization of Palestine? A greater disposition to follow up this kind of discussion had developed. The political sense of the day required definition, argument, and proof, where religion had been content to appeal merely to the instinct of reverence, and to put the whole matter on the plane of devotional feeling or exalted imagination.
Would the Jews go to Palestine?
In the nature of things it could not often happen that a nation would undergo rapidly any great, although at the same time peaceful and salutary change. A nation may, indeed, develop almost in a day. Empires have evaporated in fury or exploded in passion. But then such violent changes have usually been vicious and destructive. An utterly demoralized people will abandon itself in a moment to a dream of ambition, turn its ploughshares into swords, and break from its borders to conquer the world. A new field for cupidity or pleasure, the discovery of a continent, the sudden acquisition of a fertile territory or a mine of wealth, has ere now turned an ancient and noble race into a rabble of adventurers. But it is very rare, almost unparalleled, for a peaceful people to find a new opening all at once. There was doubt, then, about the Jewish desire for redemption.
Side by side with their attachment to the land of their birth, the sense of a long-lost home lies deep in the hearts of the Jewish masses, and they are drawn towards it by a longing expressed in heartfelt songs and prayers, in wishes and in hopes, not in rebellious efforts. But could the Jews by themselves, as a whole nation, or as scattered and divided masses, as a defenceless and persecuted minority, take up the realization of their cherished hope? Although it was an international political scheme, leading Jews would have to raise their voices and start the work if they wished to see its accomplishment.
Sir William Robert Wills Wilde (1815–1876) wrote:—[¹]
[¹] Narrative of a Voyage to ... the Shores of the Mediterranean, including a visit to ... Palestine, etc. Dublin, 1840, vol. ii., pp. 358–363.
“This extraordinary people, the favoured of the Lord, the descendants of the patriarchs and prophets, and the aristocracy of the earth, are to be seen in Jerusalem to greater advantage, and under an aspect and in a character totally different from that which they present in any other place on the face of the globe. In other countries the very name of Jew has associated with it cunning, deceit, usury, traffic and often wealth. But here, in addition to the usual degradation and purchased suffering of a despised, stricken, outcast race, they bend under extreme poverty, and wear the aspect of a weeping and a mourning people; lamenting over their fallen greatness as a nation, and over the prostrate grandeur of their once proud city. Here the usurer is turned into the pilgrim, the merchant into the priest, and the inexorable creditor into the weeping suppliant....” “It is curious, ... to read the indications of fond attachment of the Jew to the very air and soil, scattered about in Jewish writings; ... ‘The air of the land of Israel,’ says one, ‘makes a man wise’; another writes, ‘he who walks four cubits in the land of Israel is sure of being a son of the life to come.’ The great Wise Men are wont to kiss the borders of the Holy Land, to embrace its ruins, and roll themselves in its dust.”[¹]
[¹] The German Jewish weekly, Der Orient (Leipzig, 1840, N 16), mentions “a Christian divine, Rev. William Filson Marsh (1775–1864), who wrote to the then Chief Rabbi in London, the Rev. Solomon Hershell (1761–1842), about the necessity of a Jewish state in Palestine.”
The following extracts are taken from Der Orient, a German newspaper. They seem to betoken a movement among continental Jews in relation to the late crisis in Syria:—
“We have a country, the inheritance of our fathers, finer, more fruitful, better situated for commerce, than many of the most celebrated portions of the globe. Environed by the deep-delled Taurus, the lovely shores of the Euphrates, the lofty steppes of Arabia and of rocky Sinai, our country extends along the shores of the Mediterranean, crowned by the towering cedars of The Lebanon, the source of a hundred rivulets and brooks, which spread fruitfulness over shady dales.... A glorious land! situate at the farthest extremity of the sea which connects three-quarters of the globe, over which the Phœnicians ... sent their numerous fleets to the shores of Albion, near to both the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf; ... the central country of the commerce between the east and the west. Every country has its peculiarity; every people their own nature.... No people of the earth have lived so true to their calling from the first as we have done.